Feds and state crack down on air pollution outside Chicago school

Michael Hawthorne, Tribune reporter

Federal and state officials are cracking down on a smelter in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood after linking it to high levels of toxic lead in the air outside an elementary school less than two blocks away.

In a legal complaint filed Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accused H. Kramer and Co. of emitting illegal amounts of brain-damaging pollution detected between October and January at Perez Elementary School, 1241 W. 19th St.

At the same time, the Illinois EPA asked Attorney General Lisa Madigan to take enforcement action against H. Kramer, which has been melting scrap metal into brass and bronze ingots since the 1920s and remains one of the biggest industrial sources of lead in the Chicago area.

The Tribune first reported early this month that average lead levels at Perez were at or above federal limits during three three-month periods in 2010. Lead pollution exceeded health standards during a fifth of the days monitored last year and, on one day in December, spiked to more than 10 times higher that the federal limit.

Alarmed by the results, officials put another lead monitor on the roof of nearby Juarez Community Academy last month in an attempt to pinpoint the culprits. Perez is just north of the smelter, while Juarez is less than two blocks west.

Monitoring data show the highest concentrations of lead came when winds generally blew away from the smelter toward the elementary school, according to the U.S. EPA complaint.

"The agency expects H. Kramer to take immediate steps to reduce lead emissions," said Susan Hedman, the Obama administration's regional EPA administrator.

Regulators moved quickly because a growing number of studies show that even tiny amounts of lead ingested or inhaled can damage the brains of young children and trigger learning disabilities, aggression and criminal behavior later in life. Most scientists say there is no safe level of exposure.

Illinois put a monitor on the roof of Perez Elementary last year after the U.S. EPA lowered the maximum amount of lead allowed in the air to 0.15 micrograms per cubic meter, a standard that is 10 times more stringent than the former limit. Violations are determined by three-month rolling averages.

For years, H. Kramer was the largest industrial source of lead pollution in the Chicago area. The smelter, at 21st and Throop streets, churned out as much as 1,450 pounds of the toxic metal in a year as recently as 2007.

Company officials have since reduced the facility's emissions in response to pressure from community leaders and environmental regulators. But federal and state officials question whether H. Kramer's efforts were effective enough to meet tougher health standards.

On March 16, for instance, the amount of lead detected downwind from the smelter at Perez Elementary was 0.24 micrograms per cubic meter of air, above the federal limit. Upwind from Kramer, the monitor at Juarez recorded 0.07 micrograms of lead per cubic meter on the same day.

While inspectors always suspected the smelter was the likely culprit, the EPA looked at dozens of other polluters within a three-mile radius of the elementary school, including the nearby Fisk coal-fired power plant. Fisk is another big industrial source of lead in Pilsen, but it is southeast of Perez and appears to be an unlikely source of the lead detected outside the school, officials said.

Todd Wiener, an attorney for H. Kramer, said the company will not comment on the complaint until it receives more information from the environmental agencies.

The EPA complaint is related to a larger investigation in Pilsen, where federal and state officials are responding to "environmental justice" complaints that the predominantly Latino, low-income neighborhood is disproportionately affected by air pollution.

"Kramer needs to take full responsibility for the high lead incidents and fix the problem," said Maria Chavez, a neighborhood activist. "The people in Pilsen deserve the right to breathe clean air, especially our precious children who attend the nearby schools."